Before I could come out from behind the piano, Carla spoke to someone out of my sight. “You see, Mr. Asche? If I am to help your daughter as Oriana wants me to, she must be fully in my charge. This sort of thing mustn’t be allowed to happen. That’s why I asked Paul to bring you up here.”
I froze where I sat. For a moment I’d thought that “Mr. Asche” might refer to Everett, but I quickly knew better, and knew there was no way for me to escape. Hidden in shadow, I could see down the room to where Paul Woolf had come in from the outside ramp, pushing a wheelchair. Stephen sat upright watching his daughter. I knew that red hair, close-cropped now, with no lock to fall over his forehead. His eyes had narrowed and I could catch none of the green flash I’d loved. The strong bone structure of his face and head were the same, though he had thinned terribly. His hands—no longer the strong, tanned hands that had held me so lovingly, teasingly—lay flaccid on the blanket across his lap. Even his voice, as he spoke to Carla, had changed—its timbre hollow and listless.
“Oh, let her dance. What does it matter?”
But Jilly had come out of her enchantment. Her arms dropped heavily as all the vibrant fire went out of her and she turned into a lump of a child, without grace. I knew she’d pulled into herself again—into that place where all that might hurt her could be shut away. On the tape, the singer still poured out “White Light”—Giving me the power to be—making me free.
I stood up and turned off the music.
“Well, look who’s here,” Paul Woolf said mockingly.
I knew by his tone that someone had told him who I was, though clearly Carla didn’t know and had no sense of the implications of this sudden meeting. She began to protest again about Jilly’s dancing, but Stephen’s look stopped her.
He hadn’t known I was in the house. The shock of recognition was quickly hidden, and a harsh rigidity froze his face into grim lines. I started down the room toward his wheelchair, even though I had no idea what I could say, what possible reason I could offer for being here. The “truth” had become suddenly illogical and foolish and unexplainable. I only knew that I must speak to him, and somehow break through his revulsion at the sight of me.
There was no opportunity. He looked at me just once before he spoke to Paul—a look of utter rejection. “Get me out of here!”
Paul seemed to be enjoying this, and he threw me another mocking glance as he wheeled Stephen outside.
Carla had no inkling of what had just happened, and she spoke to Jilly. “Come downstairs with me—now!”
Jilly, of course, hadn’t understood either. The look she gave me—a frightened plea for help—went unanswered because I had no way at that moment to reassure her. My own devastation was too great. She must have seen how useless I had become, for she followed Carla from the room, her shoulders rounded under a burden she should never have had to carry.
Rage swept through me because of what we were all doing to Jilly. I was as angry with myself as I was with them. We’d all failed her, and my own powerlessness made me ashamed.
I turned toward the fireplace at the end of the long room where Oriana danced, shivering with cold—as though I expected to find warmth from its cold hearth. This was the only part of the room left of the plan Stephen and I had made. All the rest belonged to Oriana. But this place was to have been ours. Mine and the Stephen I’d loved so desperately, and who had been lost to me for a long time. In a bitter memory of something that had never happened, I could see myself lying on that imaginary rug from Peru, with Stephen’s arms around me, holding me against the chill that settled on me now.
The truth that I’d never been willing to face had come through to me with terrible clarity. I had never stopped loving Stephen. I still ached with love for him—and hated and pitied him at the same time. The years of pretending fell away as though they had never been. Nothing else mattered to me. Not the work I’d found satisfying and at times very rewarding; not my conviction that by this time Stephen and I were two people who wouldn’t recognize each other. That was true. Yet I had recognized Stephen and I knew how much I loved him—no matter how greatly we had both changed.
I must get away from Virginia. I would pack my things and go—as I should have done before. If I stayed in this house a moment longer, I couldn’t be sure what I might do. I was still angry because of Jilly—but that was something I couldn’t deal with, now that I knew the truth about me.
With hands that shook I picked up my tape player and walked unsteadily down the room. I felt almost blind, as though I couldn’t be sure where I was putting my feet. Not even when I’d first gone away after we’d broken up had I felt like this. I’d been braver then. I’d been determined to build a good life, fall in love with someone new, find the happiness I knew I could create for myself. Then, a few moments ago, I’d looked down this room at Stephen in his wheelchair—and everything else was illusion.
Not until I reached the far end of the room near the stairs did I see Julian Forster standing in the shadows watching me. I would have run past him because he was only a shadow for me—not a real man. Nothing was real except Stephen, helpless in his wheelchair. But Julian put out a hand and stopped me. He put his arms around me as though I were a child, and held me gently until the wild fury ran out of me and I collapsed, inwardly and outwardly, bursting into tears in his arms.
“I’m sorry, Lynn,” he told me. “I blame myself—but I never dreamed that it would happen like this, or that you would feel the way you do.”
That he could be sensitive to what I was feeling was my undoing, and I went with him unprotesting as he led the way down the stairs to his study. I knew I needn’t explain anything. He must have been there from the start and seen it all.
A small electric stove offered a kettle of hot water, and he made me tea—strong, with a slice of lemon and no sugar. I sipped it gracefully as though all my life centered now in a teacup and I couldn’t deal with anything else. After a little while he began to talk to me gently.
“You’re ready to run away. No, don’t say anything. Of course that’s the first impulse that would hit you—a way to stop everything from hurting by turning your back. Escaping.”
“I never expected to feel like this,” I murmured as the tea warmed me.
He shook his head sadly—that rather leonine head with its mane of gray hair, when he was so unlionlike. “It’s still my fault. I was thinking only of Jilly, and not enough of you.”
I mustn’t listen. I mustn’t let him persuade me. “I can’t stay, Julian. Please understand that. Something must be done for Jilly, but not by me. Why does Carla dislike her so much? And why would Oriana bring in someone who would hate her daughter?” It helped a little to think of something besides that gaunt, helpless figure in the wheelchair.
“Oriana doesn’t think about much except her dancing. If you go, there’ll be no one to help Jilly. You are the catalyst. You’re the force that can change everything. A force that has already begun working, though you don’t want to accept that.”
“That’s foolish,” I told him weakly. “I have no weapons to fight any of them.”
“You have the best weapon of all, Lynn. Though ‘weapon’ is the wrong word. You have a better instrument—love. Not hatred and anger. For you those are passing emotions. Justified, but not lasting. Having let them out, you can be free of them, and try a better way. It’s because you love Stephen and Jilly that you can make this struggle.”
“I haven’t the energy left to struggle. You’re the only one, Julian, who can really help Jilly. Stephen’s beyond any help, I think.”
He was shaking his head. “I’m not going to be in this house much longer, Lynn. Everett has asked me to move out as soon as Vivian and I can make other arrangements. He’s furious because I didn’t immediately report that someone broke into Stephen’s rooms the other night, or that Stephen tried to take the pills.”
His words were a shock. How could even Everett do a thing like this? “Why didn’t you tell him righ
t away, Julian?”
“That’s hard to explain, but I owe you some sort of answer. I have an idea about who it was who broke in and sliced up the cushions in Stephen’s chair—with a knife from his own kitchen. And left a note. But if I told Everett my suspicion—and it’s only that—it could open a nest of vipers that might make everything worse for everyone. I’m sure Stephen’s suicide attempt—if it was really that—was because of the note. I didn’t want to tell Everett any of that—and I put it off. Don’t ask me who I think it might have been because I could be wrong.”
“What did the note say?”
“It accused Stephen of murder.”
I couldn’t believe this for a moment. Not Stephen.
“You mean because of that man who died—Luther Kersten? But even if Stephen was in some way to blame, it couldn’t have been murder. He would never kill anyone deliberately. I know that.”
“Your heart knows. I hope it was an accident. Of course I knew that Everett had to be told, Lynn, but I postponed. Sometimes I’m not very good at facing the unpleasant.”
The full significance of this move was coming home to me. “With you and Vivian gone—oh, poor Jilly! There won’t be anyone she can turn to. She’s just being thrown away. Did you see her dance, Julian?”
“I saw. I’ve seen her dance before. But you’re wrong about there being no one here to help Jilly. There’s one person.”
“Who?” I hoped he didn’t mean me.
He answered in his soft voice, cutting through the defenses I was trying to raise. “Stephen, of course. He’s the only person who can save Jilly and change everything.”
I thought of the man in the wheelchair—parody of the man I remembered. “And he will never raise a finger.”
“That’s been true in the past. But you might be able to change that. Perhaps this is why you’ve really come. This is—destiny.”
“Karma?” I said dryly. “Something I’m supposed to work out in this lifetime?
“Better to do it now and get it behind you.” He smiled sadly as he reached into the basket beside his chair and took out several small stones to roll in his fingers. The faint clicking sound made me nervous.
“So that’s why you wanted me to come!” I cried. “You could have found anyone at all to help Jilly. But you wanted me because of Stephen. Don’t you see how hopeless and foolish that is?”
“You’re wrong. It is because of Jilly. But I always knew that reaching her, helping her, would be done best through Stephen. Now that I’ve met you I can see how strong you are. You can be strong because you’re still able to love. That’s the only emotion in life that furnishes us with real courage. All other emotions are nothing beside it. Every great religious leader has known that. But ordinary humans haven’t done too well at learning how to love.”
I was a very ordinary human. “Stephen wasn’t worth loving. He gave up what we had so easily, when Oriana came along.”
“Perhaps you were both pretty young and untried. What if you had waited?”
“How could I? I couldn’t stay around and beg!”
“No, you couldn’t. But sometimes patience works better than pride. He did care about you.”
“He wasn’t worth it!” I repeated, mainly to convince myself.
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you were both beginners at life. Certainly Stephen’s not worth much now.”
Before I could protest further, Vivian came in, her makeup streaked and her eyes brimming with tears. Julian stood up and held out his arms so that she could come to him and cry against his shoulder. This was Julian’s day for holding weeping females, I thought wryly. Neither Vivian’s tears nor mine were going to help anything.
“This is my home!” Vivian cried. “Larry brought me here, and Stephen said I could always live here, even after his father died. Stephen likes you, Julian, and he would never send us away. So how can Everett—?”
“I’m afraid he can.” Julian rolled the polished stones back into their basket and held his wife sorrowfully.
“What about Meryl?” I asked. “Can’t she change Everett’s mind?”
Julian looked at me past Vivian’s bent head. “What do you have in mind, Lynn?”
I really had nothing at all in mind. Inside, I was crying too. Not for me, and not for Stephen, but only for Jilly. All the times when I’d sat by the bed of a sick child, all those times when renewing waves of strength had welled up in me when I needed them, weren’t only a memory. Perhaps I did have some instinctive talent—if only it would surface now.
“What about Oriana?” I asked. “Surely Jilly’s mother—”
Vivian spoke sadly. “Oriana can’t face Stephen the way he is now. That’s one of the things that has defeated him.”
“She did try,” Julian said gently.
“Try!” Vivian echoed. “She’s afraid of anything she considers ugly, and she can shatter like glass. Stephen saw how she reacted. He saw the reflection of what he’d become in Oriana’s eyes—so he’s shut out everything that might hurt him even more. He can’t bear to have Jilly around him either, asking too much of him.”
“There’s still Meryl,” I urged. “She said she was going to the farm, so she’s probably there now. Could we drive over, Vivian? Perhaps the two of us could talk to her about what Everett is doing.”
“I don’t know—” Vivian began, but Julian put her gently out of his arms.
“Go with Lynn, darling. You won’t have to do anything but be there and show Meryl how sad you are. Lynn will talk to her. And who knows—maybe it will help.”
“It may not do any good at all,” I warned Julian.
“Of course it won’t, if that’s what you believe.”
I didn’t know what I believed anymore. I had no special faith in Julian’s positive thinking—a philosophy which always seemed to be expounded by calm and happy people. Was that why they were calm and happy? The chicken or the egg?
“Perhaps it’s time, Lynn,” Julian said. “Time to apply some of what you’ve learned in your own counseling work.”
“I’m not sure right now that I’ve learned anything,” I told him, and went downstairs to wait beside Vivian’s car in the driveway. She hurried off to pick up her keys.
The house looked out at me from every window and sliding glass door—a secret, unfriendly house locked into separate compartments that didn’t house an integrated family. Nothing stirred behind the glass that mirrored sky and autumn trees. Stephen’s rooms were around the far corner, out of sight. The windows of Jilly’s apartment told me nothing. What punishment might Carla be inflicting on Jilly? What could I use out of my experience to help Stephen’s daughter?
Vivian smiled at me tremulously as she came down the steps and got into the driver’s seat.
“Julian thinks it will all work out,” she told me, and I sat beside her.
“I know,” I said wryly. “What will happen will happen. And probably everything’s for the best.”
She gave me a quick glance, and I knew that in spite of Julian’s words, hysteria wasn’t far away. It might not have been a good idea to bring Vivian on this expedition.
“It’s better to do something than to do nothing, so we’ll try,” I told her. Platitudes came easily today.
We drove for a few miles in silence before Vivian spoke again. “The trouble with Meryl is that there are a few things in her own life that I suspect she doesn’t want Everett to know about. So she has to be careful to protect herself.”
“Oh?” I said. “Such as?”
At least, Vivian had overcome her tears. “I’m only guessing. He’s a cold, unloving sort of fish. Of course she married him for all that money and position he could provide. So it would be natural if she looked in other directions for what she doesn’t have from her husband. I’m pretty sure there have been men. Maybe she even likes that tightrope of danger she walks. Because if Everett ever found out, his instinct would be to pick up a gun and avenge his honor. He can be pretty macho and old-fashio
ned sometimes.”
It was hard to imagine Meryl in this light, but perhaps my judgment had always been superficial. There was something about her—some sort of inner banked fire. Perhaps not always banked? And perhaps more inviting to a man than another woman would realize.
So where did that leave us when it came to persuading Everett to allow the Forsters to remain in the house where they belonged? I was probably walking a winding path blindfolded—and there might be a cliff to tumble over out there, if I wasn’t careful.
7
Oleander Acres was no more than half an hour’s drive from Stephen’s house. It would have been even shorter if we’d been able to go directly over the ridges in between. Stephen had taken me there once or twice when we were married. His grandfather had come from New York State to settle here, and as a boy Stephen had lived on the farm. When the old man died, the Asches had moved into Charlottesville, though the farm stayed in the family.
A side road led off the main highway, winding over a mountain and down into the valley beyond. Autumn colors were already growing stronger, so that treetops took on a variegated, sculptured look on the mountains all around. The countryside was as beautiful as it had been twelve years ago when I’d driven these roads with my husband. Only human lives changed, and old joys could never be repeated with the repeating seasons. A thought I didn’t want to entertain.
When we descended to the land around the “farm,” a small white house where the caretaker and stablemen lived came into view. Nearby were barns and extensive fenced-in paddocks and pastures.
A van and trailer had driven into an empty paddock, and its occupants had left it to work on great folds of red, yellow, blue and green cloth that billowed across the ground.
“Oh, look!” Vivian cried. “A hot air balloon has come down. The Roscoes, Everett’s neighbors out here, run balloon trips over the Blue Ridge. Flights of Fancy, they call it. Julian and I have gone up with them, and it’s one of Jilly’s disappointments that she’s never gone up. Everett thinks it’s dangerous. Let’s get out and watch.”
The Singing Stones Page 9
